Microsoft and DirectTV Announcement
One of the more exciting (to me anyway...) announcements from CES last week was the partnership announced between Microsoft and DirectTV. The announcement was made during Bill Gates' keynote - he said that MS would work with DirectTV to bring both SD and HD content into the Media Center world. No details given on what that means or when it will happen, but this is the first time I've heard of any plans to bring DirectTV content directly into Media center.
This is a BIG announcement for DirectTV fans like me given...especially in the light of their decision to drop their partnership with Tivo. I currently have an older dual tuner Sony/Tivo DirectTV PVR that I love. It only does SD, but it works brilliantly and has been our main PVR for the past 4 years.
I love Media Center, but without a clear path on how to get DirectTV HD content into the box I haven't seen any reason to move to it. My guess is that we won't see anything in terms of DirectTV integration until this time next year (will almost certainly be tied to Vista along with cable card support...), but at least there is now a reason to believe it will happen at some point!
Couple of interesting links:
MS Press Announcement: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jan06/01-05WMDIRECTVPR.mspx
Additional Coverage: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060105-5913.html